This review discusses several factors that affect women’s participation and achievement in the formal educational system and that contribute to significant gender inequalities in education. Cultural norms and the division of labor within the home function to the detriment of girls, who are defined primarily as future mothers. Women in higher socioeconomic classes experience less restriction in gaining access to university, but cultural norms still lead them to select from a limited number of fields of study. The school experience of most women provides them with messages and practices that reinforce rather than challenge the sexual division of labor. Although the literature treats the various determinants of participation and achievement in a segmented, decontextualized manner, the evidence suggests that the family and school-related factors are not independent but operate in a symbiotic relationship. The review uses feminist theories to provide an interpretation of the empirical findings and discusses th...

Determinants of Educational Participation and Achievement of Women in the Third World: A Review of the Evidence and a Theoretical Critique

This paper examines the determinants of adult cognitive competencies and of child school participation in the Terai region of Nepal. Data on three generations from 795 rural farm households were analyzed. The results of the analysis are: 1) First generation (grandparent) landholdings, literacy and caste status were significant determinants of second generation "innate ability" as measured by the "Ravens Progressive Matrices" (RPM) test. 2) RPM was a significant determinant of second generation schooling. 3) Second generation schooling was a significant determinant of second generation literacy, numeracy, reading comprehension and attitudinal modernity. 4) Attitudinal modernity was a significant determinant of attitude toward school for all households, but not for the subset of households in villages for which school availability data had been obtained. 5) In these latter villages, there was no relationship between school availability and a positive attitude toward school. 6) Third generation child school participation was determined jointly by second generation landholdings, caste, schooling and numeracy, and attitudinal modernity, and the child's sex. 7) Girls were significantly less likely to have completed at least one year of school than were boys. 8) The presence of small children in the household only slightly decreased girls' chances to participate in school. 9) School availability had no tffect on child school participation.

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Participation in schooling : determinants and learning outcomes in Nepal

This article is an attempt to apply a systematic use of theory to gender inequalities in education. It expands on the tenets of liberal, radical, and socialist feminist perspectives to account for differential gender outcomes in terms of educational access, attainment, and field of study choices. The State emerges as a key actor regulating and promoting educational processes and outcomes, and the perspective that most accurately captures the State's practices is socialist feminism. There has been a recent convergence in feminist thought toward the meshing of ideological and material elements in the explanation of women's subordination, bringing closer than ever the radical and socialist feminist perspectives. These perspectives detect severe limits in the State's ability to improve women's conditions while groups outside the State, particularly women‐run organizations, are identified as the most likely sources of significant educational change and thus social change, in the interests of women.

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Gender Inequality in Education: accounting for women's subordination

This article evaluates the gender sensitivity of indicators of health nutrition education and composite indices which are relevant to developing countries using the analytical framework of functionings . First the functionings framework within which well-being will be assessed is outlined. The following sections discuss indicators of basic functionings and additionally present an outline of their implications for policy and future research. Reference bibliographies are also included. Findings showed that a constituent under-10 female/male ratio (at 0-4 years and 5-9 years) appears to be a suitable indicator for health. By contrast the morbidity and nutrition outcome indicators suffer methodological and conceptual problems which render them unreliable. Anthropometric measures are potentially useful given appropriate norms and standardized cut-off points and provided that their limitations are borne in mind when interpreting findings arrived at by using them. In assessing gender gaps in education enrolment and drop-out ratios are more useful than level of adult literacy or mean number of years of schooling but micro-level research is required to decide which of these two indicators is more reliable. Composite indices like the Physical Quality of Life Index and Gender-Related Development Index are potentially useful although they require some alterations to increase their relevance to developing countries.

https://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/2E3F47202FAD83DC80256B67005B6FF2/$file/dp95.pdf

The Gender Sensitivity of Well‐being Indicators

The article examines the outcomes of affirmative action policies aimed at improving access for women students to university education in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Different interpretations of affirmative action are found in the three countries. These include lower entry scores, remedial
 pre-university programmes and financial assistance. There are limitations and weaknesses inherent in the piecemeal strategies that focus only on the point of admission to university. Thus affirmative action as currently applied does not enhance access and gender equity in university education.
 A multifaceted approach to developing gender equality in universities would require various strategies to support one another in order to enhance access and gender equity in university education in the three countries.

Affirmative action, gender equity and university admissions – Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania

In this descriptive and exploratory discussion of the participation of women in education in the 3rd world focus is only on participation in schools. The index used is years of schooling for each sex. It provides measures of utilization. The question is how far do girls go in school compared with boys and what do they study. Attention is directed to the following: participation versus access; literacy and primary schooling across the generations; enrollment rates and wastage around the world (overview of enrollment rates wastage and promotion and retardation early marriage and schooling ambiguities of coeducation womens schooling in Muslim and in Latin American countries); intracountry variations in schooling of girls (spatial diffusions of schooling sex and social selection for schooling and the assessment of progress). The availability of educational options does not ensure their utilization and in the less developed countries (LDCs) this distinction between provision and utilization is basic for policy. Whether schooling of a daughter is considered valuable will be influenced by perceptions of the effects of schooling on jobs on acquisition of a "better" husband on quality of domestic life on the daughters personality development and on the well-being of her children. How girls perform in school compared with boys is affected by the same factors determining initial access. The situation regarding differences in literacy and primary schooling between men and women is presented in tables to illustrate 4 distinctive patterns of change. Sex differentials in schooling among children 6-11 are negligible in European countries and in Latin America although the rates in Latin America are lower. In these regions only small differentials occur for ages 12-17 and sex contrasts continue to be moderate at ages 18-23. In the 3rd world the situation is different. In Asian countries (excluding Japan) the rates for 6-11 year olds are 71 and 50% respectively and for Africa 59 and 43%; at ages 12-17 in Asia 83 and 22% and in Africa 39 and 24%. Everywhere outside the most developed regions intercountry variations in enrollment rates are very large for both sexes as are disparities in those rates. A country can rank quite differently at each level of school for the proportion of girls and countries vary greatly in female shares of pupils. In countries where girls are married at ages 15-19 their enrollments at those ages are lower but there is no simple trade-off between marriage and schooling. It appears that there are common causes for both early marriage and low school attendance. In all aspects of girls schooling the availability of women teachers is salient as both an instrument and a product. The proportion of girls who are in school can vary more among provinces than among countries taken as a whole. The factors affecting educational opportunities are numerous and cross cutting. Possibly the firmest generalization regarding social selectivity in the education of girls is that socioeconomic status of parents has more influence on the schooling of girls than of boys. This influence frequently is greater in rural localities or among disadvantaged ethnic groups than it is in favored segments of the population. Probit and logit models are becoming widely used in many different kinds of studies of educational participation.

Bowman Mj

Papers

The Participation of Women in Education in the Third World